Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

by V.E. Schwab

Born restless, her father used to say. Which was fine for a son, but bad for a daughter.

“I need no wings,” she says with a smirk. “I am a witch.”

Only later did her mother say that not all sins were boulders, that most in fact were more like pebbles.

“Only to a fool,” says the widow. “Are you a fool, little girl?”

“And how is a miracle different from a spell? Who is to say the saint was not a witch?”

“Careful. In nature, beauty is a warning. The pretty ones are often poisonous.”

Nothing fits, even if it’s fitted, because it’s not really about the size of the body or how it fills the clothes, but how much space it takes up in the world.

“One can be alone without feeling lonely,” she muses. “One can feel lonely without being alone.”

Love. As terrible and bottomless as hunger.

He arched a brow and said, “We are not equal, Charlotte.” There was no malice to the words, and still they stung. “In intellect, perhaps. In willfulness, surely. But the simple fact is that you are a woman, and I am a man. And yes, it does afford me certain freedoms. But even so, one day I will need to take a wife, just as you will need to take a husband.”

“Did you find someone brave enough to love you?”

No longer a person at all, but a trophy, a trinket.”

loneliness is just like us,” says Ezra. “It has to be invited in.”